So I suppose I should start the show talking about the game.

How incredible is it that all I have to say is the game and we know what I’m going to talk about, even though there are other games on this weekend.

For goodness sake the Kiwis play Australia in League tonight in Woolongong. Not that you’d know from the coverage. But I’m picking a great match and a Kiwi surprise.

Back to rugby, there are other games except for THE game.  Tomorrow Tasman play Wellington in Nelson for the Mitre 10 Premiership, while tonight Bay of Plenty play Hawkes Bay in Rotorua for the Championship title. In the Meads Cup in Oamaru tomorrow it’s North Otago versus Wanganui. Meanwhile in Greymouth on Sunday West Coast play South Canterbury for the Lochore Cup.

I’d love to be at any of those games. For the players it’s their World Cup. I like the teams. Most of them are the biggest thing in their town. I like the venues. I’m sure I’d like the crowds who will be happy in a long weekend watching games with stuff up for stakes.

This is bedrock stuff for New Zealanders. Not all of them of course. But I’m sure most of us at some stage or another have put on the scarf and greatcoat and sensible shoes and pottered off to watch 80 minutes of footy.

So to the game.

It will be the best game in a long while. I believe it could be the best game in the World Cup ever. It will be close. It features two happy, relaxed and supremely skilled sides. Who are coached by two smart, funny human beings.

Neither side seems to have nerves, just joy at the prospect of trying their best. It will be a game of millimetres and split seconds.

And it will be watched by an enormous audience. Because it’s live. At 9pm. And free to air on TVNZ.

I am predicting a massive audience for the state broadcaster and this is a huge fillip for free to air TV. As Mediaworks struggles and TVNZ faces a 17 million dollar loss we’ve heard that the days of free to air are over.  That no longer do we hunger for that feeling of communal participation. All of us seeing the same thing at the same time and reacting together.

Tomorrow might be the last hurrah of a nation glued to TV1 but if it is what a way to go out. And here’s a question. Who’ll bother to go on the new fangled streaming newcomer when it’s there in all it’s hi def quality on humble old UHF and VHF.